It's not the first time I've seen news stories about law enforcement on the social Web (see links below), but the Washington Post reports it's the first time police in the DC area have established a MySpace profile. The Arlington, Va., Police Department is "hoping that children who use MySpace will add the department to their lists of 'top friends' to discourage sexual predators from contacting … [Read more...] about Police department’s MySpace profile
MySpace
Age verification not the ‘killer app’
ConnectSafely.org, a site and forum, Larry Magid and I co-direct, was invited to join the Internet Safety Task Force that is part of MySpace's settlement last January with 49 state attorneys general. The Task Force's first meeting last month - attended by Internet companies including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, AOL, Google, and Yahoo, age- and identity-verification companies, and online-safety … [Read more...] about Age verification not the ‘killer app’
‘Curmudgeon’s’ guide to widgets
Not everyone loves widgets, those little applications supposedly adding fun and a sort of animation to social-networking profiles. Parents, here's the perspective of someone who finds some of them a little annoying (words such as "insidious" and "invasive" are used), including Facebook's No. 1 app, the FunWall. Another, bigger, reason to be wary of widgets is in the privacy-protection area. Note … [Read more...] about ‘Curmudgeon’s’ guide to widgets
MySpace opens to widgetmakers
Like Facebook, MySpace has opened its doors to people who create parasitical little software applications for profiles on its site. It's offering developers tools to create these little apps riding on its "platform," the New York Times reports. Called "widgets," they can add a lot of fun and functionality to users' experience on MySpace and could make the site that much more "sticky" for its … [Read more...] about MySpace opens to widgetmakers
MySpace ‘backdoor’ closed
The day that Wired magazine reported the availability of a "backdoor" to photos on some MySpace users' private profiles, the site sealed the door, MySpace said. It's an example of how the Net industry and the media, at odds on the surface, actually work together to protect users. Though Wired said "the glitch emerged last fall," it didn't report on it till January 17, the day MySpace said the … [Read more...] about MySpace ‘backdoor’ closed